China Reform Monitor: No. 1077

December 21:

China, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar will develop an extensive transportation infrastructure corridor among them including road, rail, water and air links, joint power projects and telecoms networks. The corridor will run from Kunming to Kolkata, India and link Mandalay, Myanmar with Dhaka and Chittagong, Bangladesh. The plan will “advance multi-modal connectivity, harness the economic complementarities, promote investment and trade and facilitate people-to-people contacts,” the four nations announced following the first official talks on the initiative this week in Kunming, Yunnan. Each country will select several infrastructure projects to prioritize and discuss along with different financing options at the next meeting in June 2014 in Bangladesh. Improving the road networks will likely be a top priority, The Hindu reports.

December 22:

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is expanding its “thought reform” campaign against “Western values” to oppose press freedom and enhance party loyalty in the media. The next step, Kyodo reports, is to expand control over the management of China’s top journalism schools and their administration to increase the media’s role as the CPC’s “throat and tongue.” Under the plan, next year the Central Propaganda Department will dispatch staff to universities to take over top posts at their journalism schools, review their curricula, and audit their budgets. Party authorities informed university officials earlier this month about the plan. Targeted universities include Peking University, Communication University of China, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Wuhan University and Jinan University in Guangdong.

[Editor’s Note: This new campaign is part of a larger CPC effort to exert control over the press and universities, both considered hotbeds of liberalism. In May, authorities banned university classes from discussing seven subjects including “freedom of the press,” “citizen rights,” “universal values” implying respect for human rights and democracy, and “historical mistakes of the Communist Party.” In October, Peking University sacked economics professor Xia Yeliang an outspoken democracy advocate and ordered 250,000 journalists to attend a nationwide training program on the Marxist view of journalism.]

Five years after signing a deal between the Afghan government and the China’s MCC on copper extraction in Afghanistan, the relationship has reached impasse. Kabul says the deadlock is caused by the delicate and time-consuming removal of 2000 year-old relics discovered in the mine. MCC, by contrast, claims the key problem is lack of phosphate, Afghan Channel One TV reports. Nasir Ahmad Dorani, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of mines and petroleum, said: “We have reached deadlock. New problems have emerged and we cannot extract the way initially been mentioned in the agreement. It does not mean that we cannot work with MCC, but the way the work is going on now is against the rules of extraction, we cannot damage our environment and cannot sacrifice our workers.” Over the past five years, MCC has invested $360 million in the Logar copper mine and paid $286 million to the Afghan government. Kabul has spent $8 million on mine clearance, $10 million on relic removal, and $1 million to build a museum for the relics.

December 26:

North Korea has strengthened its border patrols and dispatched agents to China to try to stem the flow of defections, a South Korean official said in comments carried by Yonhap. North Korean agents are in China working with Chinese authorities to try to find North Korean defectors and send them back to the North. Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are hiding in China, hoping to travel to Southeast Asia before resettling in South Korea, home to more than 26,000 North Korean defectors. China does not recognize North Korean defectors as refugees and generally repatriates those caught to the North, where they can face harsh punishment.

December 28:

The Indian Army hopes to improve its “understanding of China and the way it functions” by establishing “China cells” in its Northern, Eastern and Central Commands and is pushing its recruits to learn Chinese and familiarize themself with Chinese culture. “Knowledge of Mandarin Chinese and Chinese culture and customs have in the past proved valuable to senior Indian Army officers,” The Asian Age reports.